Chapter 6
The officer stepped closer to Dominic.
“Sir, you need to remain where you are.”
Dominic ignored him and reached toward Audrey’s wrist.
The officer caught him immediately.
The deck erupted.
Victoria screamed his name.
Dominic struggled.
The officer turned him around and held him firmly against the side rail.
“You were warned,” the officer said.
Audrey stepped back, breath shaking.
Elliot moved in front of her.
The yacht captain appeared near the entrance.
“I want them off my vessel,” Audrey said.
Her voice was not loud.
But it carried.
The captain nodded.
“Security.”
Victoria stared at Audrey in disbelief.
“You would throw your own groom off the yacht?”
Audrey looked at the contract still lying on the table.
“No. I’m removing a man who tried to buy a wife with her own company.”
Dominic stopped struggling then.
Maybe because the sentence landed in front of everyone.
Maybe because he finally understood no performance would save him.
Victoria tried one last time.
“You’ll regret this. No respectable family will stand with a woman who walks away at the altar.”
Audrey looked at the guests.
Then at the Crestwood employees.
Then at the board member who gave her a small nod.
“I’m not walking away from the altar,” she said. “I’m walking away from a trap.”
No one clapped at first.
The moment was too heavy.
Too raw.
Then Audrey’s COO stood.
So did the board member.
Then her college friend.
Then an older dock manager who had worked for Crestwood since Audrey was twelve.
One by one, people rose.
Not cheering.
Standing.
That was enough.
Dominic saw it.
Victoria saw it.
The bride they thought would choose marriage over herself was not standing alone.
Dominic was escorted off the yacht with the officer and security.
Victoria followed, humiliated, her gold dress flashing in the sunlight as cameras she had invited for society photos captured her exit instead.
The contract remained on the table.
Audrey picked it up.
For a moment, everyone thought she might tear it.
She did not.
She handed it to Elliot.
“File it with everything else.”
May you like
He nodded.
👉 Dominic and Victoria were escorted off the yacht, but Audrey refused to destroy the contract — she wanted it filed as evidence.
